“They’ll feed us.”
“We should have a lawyer. Not one we have to pay for either, but one they provide. You know, to protect our rights.”
“Uh-huh.”
At noon the sheriff and deputy brought them their meals: buttered bread and a strip of beef so tough it ate like jerky and tasted like boot leather. They remained in the room while the inmates ate. The redheaded deputy stood with his arms folded and glared into the cells, and Tolliver sat on a stool in the corner of the room and read a newspaper. At one point he gave a grunt of disgust and shook his head.
“If they had two boys who threw like Mel Harder, my Indians would win the pennant going away, Burt,” he told the deputy. “Win it by ten games.”
Arlen, chewing his stale bread, heard that and thought, Cleveland. That’s where Tolliver was from. He surely wasn’t local—both his voice and his sunburned skin spoke of a life spent far north of this place. How did a man from Cleveland find himself as sheriff of a backwater Florida county, though?
When they were finished eating, the deputy gathered their plates and Tolliver crumpled the newspaper and asked without interest whether they’d like to offer any changes to their stories. They did not. Paul inquired—a great deal more tentatively than he had with Arlen—why they were still in the jail if they hadn’t been charged with anything.
“Have to ask the judge about that.”
“When will he be back? I don’t believe it’s legal to keep us—”
“You know who decides what’s legal?” Tolliver said. “Solomon Wade.”
That was the end of it. Arlen never said a word. When the sheriff was gone, Paul said, “Arlen, this isn’t right.”
Arlen said, “Kid, you been around long enough to know ain’t much about this world that’s right. Leastwise not lately.”
“They could keep us locked up in here for weeks. Shoot, for months.”
“It won’t be months,” Arlen said, “and it won’t be weeks.”
“How in the hell are you so sure?” the kid snapped with an unnatural harshness. “You see that in your head, too, like the dead men on that train?”
“No,” Arlen said. “This one’s more of a guess.”
It was quiet, and then Paul said, “Arlen, I’m sorry. It’s just that—”
“I know,” Arlen said. “For what it’s worth, kid, I’m sorry, too. But you’ll see a lot more of this in your time. Foul deeds done by men who have themselves some power. They’ll beat on you in some way or another just ’cause they can, and most times they won’t answer for it.”
“When we get out of here,” Paul said, “I just want to get back to one of the camps. Doesn’t even have to be the Keys. I just want to get back to a CCC camp.”
That brought some comfort to Arlen. He said, “We’re going back to Flagg Mountain. It isn’t wise to stay in Florida after this. We’ll have trouble even if we don’t deserve it. Word gets around.”
“When do you think we’ll be back?”
“End of the week at the latest.”
“That sounds good,” Paul said. “Be nice to be back by Friday. Today’s Monday, right? Today’s Labor Day. Some holiday we had.”
He was right, Arlen realized. It was the end of the holiday now, the end of Labor Day, 1935.
Arlen had felt some swelter in his time, but not much that rivaled the way that jail got by midafternoon. The back wall faced west, and the sun came on and baked into the stone and there wasn’t so much as an open window to let the heat breathe. Paul Brickhill shifted and muttered and paced, and Arlen lay on the cot and felt the sweat bead on his flesh and waited for Tolliver’s return.
It never came. That evening a new deputy brought them food, and then it was night and they were still in their cells. The next morning Arlen woke to the sound of rain, stretched, and ran a hand over his face. When he did it, he winced. The stubble was thickening up. Arlen shaved every morning, no matter what, refused to miss it. He hated to see the hint of a beard when he looked in the mirror. Even a touch of dark shadow on his broad jaw changed his face, made him look so much like his father it was frightening. Isaac Wagner had always worn a beard, and because of it, Arlen stayed clean-shaven. Less he resembled that man, the better.
He was still on his back, studying moisture marks that seemed to be darkening in the old ceiling, when there came the sound of a key in the door and he sat up to see Solomon Wade stepping through.
“Paul,” Arlen said in a low voice.
“Yeah.”
He’d just wanted to make sure the kid was awake. The judge walked over to Arlen’s cell and stood leaning forward with his hands wrapped around the bars. At the sight of him, Paul and his worries about prisoners’ rights had fallen silent; he offered nary a question.